September 02, 2011

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Jennifer Rubin over at the Washington Post followed up on my report from earlier this week on the Center for Public Integrity’s coordinating the timing of its report on Koch Industries with Greenpeace. Randy Barrett, spokesman for the center, told her that it was “unusual” for the center to coordinate with an advocacy organization like that.

But is it so unusual?

I found two other examples of the center coordinating with advocacy organizations around the release of its reports. In both cases, those organizations had funded the journalism, and then helped promote it – through press releases, events and links on their websites timed to coincide with the reports’ publication.

Last November, the Center’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published a major report on bluefin tuna overfishing called “Looting the Seas.” One of the report’s funders was the Pew Charitable Trusts. A day after the report was published, Pew Charitable Trusts hosted a screening of the report’s companion documentary in Washington, D.C., featuring some of the Center’s journalists. A few days later, Pew Charitable Trusts organized a call to action with other NGOs for the protection of bluefin tuna.

Andy Revkin, the New York Times’s environmental reporter, praised the “Looting the Seas” report and documentary when they were released, but raised some questions about the ties between the journalists and activists behind the documentary. The documentary was a co-production of ICIJ and tve, or Television for the Environment, a nonprofit documentary unit created by the World Wildlife Fund, the UN Environment Program and Britain’s Central TV.

The relationship of the television production to a United Nations agency and an environmental group can prompt questions about objectivity, but the package, over all, appears robust.

A similar pattern appears around ICIJ’s “Tobacco Underground” project, which was released on October 20, 2008. The same day, a press release went out from Tobacco Free Kids, an advocacy organization, datelined Geneva, promoting ICIJ’s report. Funding for the report is listed as being “coordinated by Tobacco Free Kids.”

Bill Buzenberg, the executive director of the center, said these are simply examples of promotional efforts to widen the journalism’s impact after the reports are completed. Furthermore, funders are chosen after the topics for investigations are selected, not vice versa.

“The center takes from some 50-some foundations, and in every single case, 100 percent, the center is solely responsible for the work,” he said. “It’s our work. It’s our investigation. Wherever or whoever the money comes from, they do not control our work in any way shape or form. We make decisions about what we want to cover, and then we get money for those investigations.”

After the reporters are finished, the center alerts a wide range of outlets – including advocacy groups – to get the word out.

“We tell NGOs of all kinds that our work is coming out,’ he said. “We hold webinars. We describe the work. We have embargoed copies. We are letting the world know because we want to distribute our work."

Though lately the center has come under some scrutiny from the libertarian-leaning Kochs and conservatives for coordinating with Greenpeace on timing of their report, Buzenberg pointed out that the center has also done tough reporting on the Obama administration that conservative sites like Drudge and the Heritage Foundation have linked to in the past.

“The number of foundations that support this work do it because we do good work," he said. "They don’t control it. They are proud of it. There’s a firewall between funding and the editorial work.”

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